Live data from Hacker News

We need a lot more electricians

canarymedia.com

251–260 of 533 posts

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent cold snap left East coast with rolling black outs across a number of states. This is not California where you put on a warm jacket. You heat the home, find shelter somewhere or die. I kept getting notes to hold off on using appliances for a few days. Can imagine that if our areas heat was electric that would have collapsed the grid.

Was that because of insufficient grid capacity, or not generating enough juice for everyone?

I live in NH and my town was part of it ... a 70mph single gust of wind at the boundary of a storm came through and knocked down around 60 or so trees in our 4,000 person community. Many, many pathways were simultaneously interrupted.

It is incredible that the power company got power restored in a 36 hour window, when half of it was Christmas Eve.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#252
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a AFCI in most places now. In the 2020 edition of the NEC®, Section 210.12 requires that for dwelling units, all 120-volt, single-phase, 15- and 20-ampere branch circuits supplying outlets or devices installed in dwelling unit kitchens, family rooms, dining rooms, living rooms, parlors, libraries, dens, bedrooms, sunrooms, recreation rooms, closets, hallways, laundry areas, or similar rooms or areas shall be…

Some countries you have a single one for the whole building, rather than one per circuit. That dramatically lowers the cost. The only real downside is that if you accidentally put your finger in the toaster, rather than just the power to your kitchen cutting off, the power to the whole house cuts off. I think thats a fine tradeoff to save $1200.

real downside: many things work poorly on gfci stuff. E.g. A miter saw or welder. I had AFCI/GFCI breakers in my garage per code, but essentially no power tools work with those kinds of circuits.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent cold snap left East coast with rolling black outs across a number of states. This is not California where you put on a warm jacket. You heat the home, find shelter somewhere or die. I kept getting notes to hold off on using appliances for a few days. Can imagine that if our areas heat was electric that would have collapsed the grid.

Just have a wood stove or fireplace for emergencies? Harder in cities but anywhere with detached homes, this doesn't seem like a difficult problem to solve.

"Just"? We have a wood stove. We primarily heat with it. It's awesome, and I don't want anybody to think otherwise with what I'm about to say.

It'll keep the place above 50F/10C starting from 62F/16C unattended for (generously) 8 hours. Less if it's cold. Is this primarily because the house is a log cabin with 50 year-old windows? Yeah, but lots of other houses are poorly insulated too. Once it hits 50F, a direct vent propane furnace kicks on to maintain that temperature.

When you are around, it requires a certain amount of active participation that a regular furnace does not. Is it burdensome? No, but it behooves you to have a look and act every time you walk by if action is needed.

It heats one room well, and the rest of the first floor poorly. We've added a 200mm case fan to circulate some air from the living room (where the stove is) to the kitchen. The kitchen will be a reasonable temperature several hours after the living room nonetheless. This is a roughly 600sf/60sm first floor. The second floor stays decidedly brisk, which is fine because we like sleeping with it cold. Obviously the circulation fan isn't running when the power is out.

It takes up a bunch of space. Wood stoves require clearances for safety: You don't want to light the wall on fire because the stove is too close. And probably also a non-flammable hearth for many applications.

The chimney needs an annual cleaning. You could argue that a rarely used chimney doesn't need to be cleaned of creosote on an annual basis, but the chimney sweep is also doing inspection of everything and making sure e.g. the cap is still attached and doing its job of keeping the birds out. I would not be excited by the idea of a whole subdivision worth of suburbanites lighting their wood stoves simultaneously for the first time in 5 years at some remove from their last chimney inspection.

The exhaust is likely dirtier than a modern gas furnace. Especially while you're getting it going or have it damped down. There are EPA standards, sure, but there are a lot of old stoves out there that don't comply.

Wood. We burn a couple cords annually, typically 2-ish. That's on the low side, in part because our wood stove is a little undersized (we didn't buy it), and you'd be hard-pressed to burn more in it if you tried. If you're only using your stove for an emergency, you surely don't need that much, but remember, we're really only heating 1200sf. Most houses in the US are somewhat larger to obscenely larger. A quarter of a cord isn't likely to last long in a cold snap with the power out. How much wood are we asking people to keep around for a (hopefully) once every five year occurence. Plus kindling. Plus tinder. Plus matches.

A wood stove is like any other mechanical system. It works best when it's well-maintained and the user is well-practiced. It takes up an immense amount of space inside and out that's hard to justify paying for if you aren't using regularly, and it does an inferior job of heating a typical-size US house at best.

Fireplaces, dare I say, are worse in literally every respect.

We did not lose power the weekend before Christmas; we got nailed the weekend before. It was lovely; it was like a vacation put a stockpot on top to melt snow for water (the well pump doesn't run when the power is out).

On the other hand, I missed my nephew's birthday because one of us had to keep the house warm. I also ate box mac n'cheese for a couple of meals. A wood stove that isn't specifically designed for cooking doesn't cook, and an electric stove isn't worth a shit when the power is out. Fortunately, we're hikers and have a backpacking stove. Unfortunately, it doesn't lend itself to particularly fancy cooking unless you've planned very specifically to cook on it.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#254

I considered beginning an electrician apprenticeship because I just can't sit in a cubicle 40 hours a week anymore. I'm still young enough that the physical aspects aren't an issue, but the overall working conditions, pay and benefits sound terrible. I think I'd rather just learn to repair electronics.

Where are you from that have apprenticeship? I am from Switzerland and this is a common career choice with 16 to do 4 years and be a certified technicians.

But as others have mentioned in other comments: Working for a company taking a big cut to install cables at peoples home with all the weirdness (smelly place, not at home, unfriendly, wrong description/tool) is not for me. I would suggest going straight with the goal to create a company asap and build an empire.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#255
post #17

Unrelated, but sharing just in case: I don't have electricity training, but last month I replaced my electric panel (upgrading to 30 circuits, keeping 100 amps) and it was easy: turn off every breaker (hiding face behind metal panel as is good safety strategy), turn off main, disconnect the meter, touch all dangling hot wires to ground (just in case, unsure if there's weird residual charge from something). Except for…

Your willingness to repeatedly follow a process without deviation puts you into a much smaller group than the general population. Yes, the average person can do it, but many won't. And it will be innocent bystanders or firefighters or whatever that pay the ultimate price, not the sloppy guy or gal that saved a few dollars by doing it themselves. I wish that our building codes and permitting system had provisions for…

> I wish that our building codes and permitting system had provisions for "competent amateurs", but how on earth would you do that?

What does this mean? Any “amateur” is allowed to do the work anytime they want (on their own home), and anyone can apply for a permit. They just have to pass the same inspection as everyone else. I do not see why the code (rules) would be different though, the principles of electricity and safety do not change.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#256
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is mooooore than enough spare grid capacity to deliver the electricity to electrify homes. We size the grid for peak capacity, not for average capacity, which means that there's a very low overall usage amount. And the big drivers of additional electricity, heating and transportation, are easily shiftable to non-peak times. And as we have smarter devices, and more time of use billing, load shifting will be easy…

Not at all. Grid is not ready for this it need significant capital upgrades. Yes its designed for peak load but the load profile is changing significantly. And no you absolutely cant just load shift away heating and transportation of residential homes. That isn't cost free and we don't even have the projects in place to manage that yet.

I don't know where you live but in my state (TN) most of the residential heating is electric already in my area. If the gas was turned off, the local coop wouldn't have any issues whatsoever meeting the demand.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#257
post #229
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a AFCI in most places now. In the 2020 edition of the NEC®, Section 210.12 requires that for dwelling units, all 120-volt, single-phase, 15- and 20-ampere branch circuits supplying outlets or devices installed in dwelling unit kitchens, family rooms, dining rooms, living rooms, parlors, libraries, dens, bedrooms, sunrooms, recreation rooms, closets, hallways, laundry areas, or similar rooms or areas shall be…

There are other downsides. For example, actually finding a two-pole or AFCI breaker or, worse, a combination AFCI/GFCI breaker is not so easy.

it is nearly impossible, IME. Good luck finding AFCI 20amp 2 poles for doing shared neutral 120v circuits on a 14/3 wire.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always forget the size difference between US and UK homes (I assume toomuchtodo is speaking from a US perspective). Here, in my three-bedroom UK house I'm on a 60A service fuse and considering updating to 100A in the future (amusingly, as part of a solar PV / electric vehicle charger install). I've never heard of a UK house having a larger than 100A service (although I imagine they exist here and there - it's certa…

I'd never heard of a 400 A service until just this discussion (it's common to have 100 A - 200 A), but it's important to keep in mind the voltage differences and that effect on total power: UK: 100 A x 230 V = 23,00 W US: 200 A x 120 V = 24,00 W Edit: I am wrong in my understanding of US power distribution. It's 200 A per leg, which the US has two of. But it seems like the UK may or may not have 380 3 Phase, so the n…

No, he's right.

It's not about having 400 amps per se but about sizing the wire you put in the ground. Maybe you'll have a 200a main breaker and you'll only ever use 200 amps, etc. - but the hard part was digging and future you or other future yous will be happy that the wire was upsized when it was put in.

Same with conduit. Same with number of conduits.

I can't tell you how many times I have been very pleased with myself that I threw in that extra 3/4 conduit line when we dug that one trench that one time ...

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your willingness to repeatedly follow a process without deviation puts you into a much smaller group than the general population. Yes, the average person can do it, but many won't. And it will be innocent bystanders or firefighters or whatever that pay the ultimate price, not the sloppy guy or gal that saved a few dollars by doing it themselves. I wish that our building codes and permitting system had provisions for…

For simpler jobs like installing an EVSE you can do the grunt work of dragging cable and hire a pro to wire it to the panel and pull permits.

This! I‘ve build a wooden holiday house and we‘ve installed all cables and lamps and plugs and at the end the electrician just verified and approved before connecting the main line.

Re: We need a lot more electricians

#260
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

400V between phases, 230V phase to neutral. Most homes have single phase though.

So how would you run an instant water heater or electric induction stove then? Every apartment and house I've ever lived in had 380V three-phase right to the kitchen, to the bathroom, and to basement rooms (e.g. for prosumer workshop tools).

> So how would you run an instant water heater or electric induction stove then? Every apartment and house I've ever lived in had 380V three-phase right to the kitchen,

I run an induction stove on 220V single phase every day here in the US.

Post reply on HN